Page:Essays of Francis Bacon 1908 Scott.djvu/27

Rh cause. Before her marriage she translated Certayne Sermons of the ryghte famous and excellente clerk Master B. Ochine (1550?). This is a collection of sermons by the Italian Protestant preacher, Bernardino Ochino, who was a prebend of Canterbury under Archbishop Cranmer. Fourteen of the twenty translated sermons are the work of Anne Cooke. The most interesting literary work of Bacon's mother is a translation from the Latin of Bishop Jewel's Apologia Ecclesiae Anglicanae, 1562, entitled Apologie or aunswer in defence of the Church of England, 1562 and 1564. The second edition contains a prefatory address to Lady Bacon as the translator, by Archbishop Parker. It seems that she had submitted the MS. to him, accompanied by a letter written in Greek, and he returned it to her printed. An Elizabethan Protestant treatise says,—"The apologie of this Church was written in Latin, & translated into English by A. B. (Anne Bacon) with the comendation of M. C. (Mildred Cecil), which twaine were sisters, & wives unto Cecil and Bacon, and gave their assistance and helping hands in the plot and fortification of this newe erected synagog." Queen Elizabeth thought so highly of the Apologie that she ordered a copy of it to be chained in every parish church in England. Many of Lady Bacon's letters to her sons Anthony and Francis are extant. They are written in vigorous English interspersed with quotations from Greek and Latin writers, and the picture of family relations they reveal is highly interesting.

These details show how exceptional were the Rh